


Nemesis

by celluloid



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:19:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloid/pseuds/celluloid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alvarez's giving up and giving in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nemesis

**Author's Note:**

> Written back in December 2009 for oz_magi on LiveJournal.

It all begins with the sensation of a blade slicing through skin. The cut is deep or superficial, it doesn’t matter; it’s the second time around that it does. It’s quick the first time, a tangible evidence of rage (stupid, stupid rage); the second time it’s slower, more deliberate, fully… necessary. The first time it’s met with confusion and agony, the second time it’s just a clean slash born of desperation. He can see that on the second time, all too clearly, gazing into his own face as he does it, large and soulful and dark as the red slips down his face in vast quantities, and it’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t, and maybe he wasn’t himself that day but the days after tended to follow in suit, so really, who was he to begin with.

Or maybe it’s just the atmosphere in general that does this, but it couldn’t possibly be because – really – why? Were things honestly that much different with just a little more open space? He still hurt as much as ever; it still never made sense why this place would be so much better than family, but apparently it was and who is he to break tradition—

By not saving him, that’s how. By being far, far, far too late. But things go on and after that and finding himself being questioned and making up for all that, efforts displayed on his face and that’s never going to go away, and again he tries but he isn’t able to really do anything, and he just ends up shot and trying to stick to the healing path, at least where it counts.

Because there’s still life to live and he still has some time left here, and he isn’t going to bend over for it; he’s going to keep on going because that’s what you do. It’s what everyone does, and who is he to be better than everyone else? He has a community and a family and he needs to stick to that, as ludicrous as it may end up being, and there’s still a need to prove himself and he really has to depend on himself to do it, that’s the only way he knows it’s going to happen for sure. He takes that blade again, he hides it away and waits as long as he can, and then just escalates it.

Scarring turns into blinding and the degree of severity is pushed even higher. The stage of imprisonment goes up another level and he freaks because he knows he can’t do this, and he can’t get out of it, and – he just had – two years, that’s all it ever was. 

He tests it as far as he can, but when a crutch gets cut off and all he can see are the souls he took (and what of the small body, does he still not bear responsibility for it?), and the future yields absolute nothingness, just a small grey room and his own body and whatever comes from it – he sustains himself with no help from the outside and he just can’t do that anymore – he goes for it.

It doesn’t work in quite the way he wants it to, in any real form. Even without having to be around himself and only himself all the time now, he still can’t properly be let in – despite what he actually did do – and at this point it’s him or someone else, and it’s not going to be him. It just isn’t.

Maybe his purpose here is just to bleed so that the janitor can keep his job, because that’s all that seems to happen to him. He snaps mentally and pours out physically and it’s a lot, all at once. Even with it spaced out it still hurts, each and every single time. The suddenness of it makes him buckle (but when it’s himself he’s so calm and able) and gasp, at least until he’s able to get over it.

It was suffocating before but the shocks seem to jerk him back to life, each and every single time, and with that he can’t go back, and he’s left with no other options. He trades the open air for an even more confining space and then more open air, limitless, fresh and it has to be the best damn thing that’s happened to him in a while, above whatever small blessings were present before because this is huge and recognizable and here he can stand, breathe, and then run.

It would have been so much better if it had actually worked out that way.

In the end bodies remain nothing but and scarring can give way to blindness can give way to actual murder and it hardly makes a difference. Things weren’t this bad in the first go around.

He finds ways to go back, though. He finds ways to lift his spirits and really make things work. He sets out to atone in the best ways he can, through options that are presented to him, and one works beyond marvelously. It may not be the same as open spaces and the ability to get by without crutches; it may not feel as grand or immediate, but it’s there. It has a pulse of its own and for once it’s steady, it’s stable, it has the ability to continue. 

It gives him a taste of hope – one that he fucks up just as marvelously.

Nothing gets better. It truly does look like it for a moment, but then that’s gone, out of his control. The sense of finality weighs down on him, everything having taken its toll, built up, accumulated and it gets to the point where this is what feels right. The whole thing isn’t proportionate at all, not in the grand scale of things, not compared to everyone else, but it is what it is and he can try to regain what he’s lost.

It’s just that this time he’s feeling the rhythmic stroking of delicate fingers against his bare skin, and he’s leaning into it, swaying to it, letting himself fall into it without much more of a place to go. There are maybe four people in this plane of existence who might care for him; possibly five now.

He looks up with those same eyes as before, but it’s just a blackness now, flat and empty and not real. It’s what he’s got to give, it’s what he’s got to express. It’s not the same as before, there’s no real trace of anything in there. His mind may be buzzing around but it’s all meaningless, fabricated.

The fingers may have come from a world of colour but it’s not real colour. The atmosphere is artificial and the softness is too protected, too unreal, for him to really fall for it (once everything wears off it’s going to mean absolutely nothing; even now it’s a feeling of physical connection with nothing truly beneath it). He has this brief grip on what really is, what really was, and maybe it’s some far-off memory or maybe it’s nothing but he can see this from an earlier stage, the same wide and dark eyes, but there’s more to it in the flash. And there he sees real colour. The setting may be the same as it is now, dark and quiet and supposedly supervised, but there was real colour in that moment, and there was real feeling. It was stinging and harsh and brutal and bloody, but it was real. It was the beginning before things wore down and maybe he wasn’t himself that day, but it feels more like he was then than he is now.

He wonders for just a moment if the other can even tell the difference, but it’s hard to figure out. It’s hard to keep a proper sense on himself at this point, anyway, and things flow into a more natural scene, and he feels himself pick up just a little, but it’s enough to go with it and it’s something he needs, so he draws into the fingers, pushes himself closer to them and pushes that arm back, moving in closer to that body. It’s warm and welcome and alive, with a regular pulse there again, and he just feels like he needs to capture it.

There really are colours now and they’re as real as anything else, unfocused and blurring together as they may be. He falls into it and lets himself be caught, arms extending outward and encasing him, bringing them just a little closer together, and it’s anything but unwelcome because it’s just bringing him closer to something alive and he can feel that again, he really can.

He falls to his knees, or maybe he’s guided down in that direction; it’s really unclear, there’s too much of everything everywhere, but the sense of contact remains so he takes it and goes with it because now it’s actually giving him something. He goes as far as he can, but there’s too much of a fog to figure out where next is, so he looks up and locks eyes and it comes crashing back down.

Two eyes gaze but only one really sees and that’s enough to set him off, seeing the empty whiteness flash hollow and there’s a real speck of colour again, the others all fading away as the red sets in, and fuck whatever he’d done to fix it, because it still remains and it’s never going to leave him.

The buzz abandons him and he remains fixed in one place, until he finally feels the hands on his bare back again and he pushes away from them, realizing just what it is he’s doing and in light of what he’s said and done in the past and this isn’t the way to go about setting any balances right. It isn’t a solution, it’s a continuation of the problem. 

Because if there’s still any chance then he shouldn’t give it up now. He really has been improving. People whose opinions matter know this, and they believe it, so it has to be true, and it isn’t just an issue of his own warped, crazy perspective interfering with reality. And it could yield something one day. It might be a lot to hope for now – too much, in fact – but it’s still a possibility.

How long can one hold a faceless grudge, anyway? He knows the answer before he even really thinks it, and figures that someone is less likely to stab a member of the parole board to death.

He takes in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to sort himself out again because his mind is reaching those far-off places again and he has no desire to go back there, and that’s when real sound comes rushing back to his world, the silence becoming more palpable and a soft, soothing voice muttering what he assumes must be reassurances of some sort in his ear, lips up close, tongue occasionally flicking at the lobe.

He jerks away immediately, pulling back and regarding the other sentient being here coldly. They’re both down on the ground, eyes level with one another, and he wants to put as much distance between them as he can, but it simply isn’t a possibility. The room is too small, it’s as small as the ones before but he has to share it now. But that in itself is a positive turn on the whole thing. His emotions aren’t running high and there’s no adrenaline pumping through his system. He has no reason to take his mattress and thrash it about, shrieking to the high heavens endlessly. And the situation sort of nullifies most of what else happened to follow, too: nobody’s directly hunting him down anymore. There’s no immediate threat. What he knew has been broken down completely, floundering. There wouldn’t be any need for him to spy or kill or any of that. That can be put behind him, maybe.

It’s still dark and nothing should be going on now. He pulls back, having already tripped up tonight, having lost himself and nearly going somewhere inconceivable, having had everything drudged up in a moment and having had what was fake and what was real slam right up against one another in too rapid a succession. The day’s been absolute shit and the night doesn’t need to progress in the same way. It’s dark and he’s fucking tired and he can’t put up with this.

He pulls further back, retreating to the simple mattress that’s likely as good as he’s going to get from hereon out, again lying on his stomach, arms folded beneath his chin, staring out at the common area below, as though nothing had just happened, though he can’t really deny the taste of living he felt again.

But it’s not worth it. It can’t be. There has to be something else, something more than a tongue swirling against glass, stain staying there for him to see when the light shines in the right direction to show it again.

He has no idea what to do with himself and it’s new, because before there was always something to figure out. Even if it wasn’t going to happen, there was something, some sort of scenario to play out in his head, see if it would work out and fix something he did in the past. But he’s done all he can and now there’s nothing. He’s been told, point-blank and to his face without any hidden malice that there isn’t anything else he can do except break down further and further and further until, well, he isn’t sure what.

He can’t reach out to anyone, either. They have other responsibilities and there’s only one person completely fixated on him now, and he doesn’t want it. And nobody else really even cares, so there’s only one person to go to.

Staying out of it is optimal, though. There’s always a chance. It’s so slim but it’s there, so he stays in the real world. He knows pain and he knows suffering and he’s on intimate terms with total isolation, but he also knows how to feel. He can keep himself together and somewhere down the line he can find something, because there are always unexpected surprises, and something’s always happening, and maybe his turn will come around again and he’ll be able to pick a new card and it’ll be one he’ll actually want to play.

It takes so much to hold out constant hope, though. It’s depleting and there isn’t enough of reality to counteract it. He sees his life as it is as the day plays out, aimless and with no point to it. He tries to shy away, he averts his gaze from those stupid fucking tabs, he consumes the barest of nutrients and he goes through whatever motions he has to, and throughout it all there’s a constant haze of nothingness.

There’s nothing in past times to reflect on. The good might as well have never happened. Hell, the same can go for the bad as well. So when he’s back to being confined with the object of his disgust, he can’t find the resolve in him to object, and he was right before, the tabs will keep him running.

There really isn’t much left for him. Six years of incarceration here; he knows better than to hold out hope for something better to come along. Drugs have proven themselves well enough. He can continue to run on them. It’s something to live for, it brings about the chance to feel. That’s really all he can ask for now.

He’ll watch others continue to lose and crumble, victims of their own selfishness, getting their own just dues, and he’ll be the impartial observer because it doesn’t concern him. He already has his own shit and his own solution. He’ll make it through the day, just barely, and when night comes he’ll succumb to his own subdued party, ignoring the eyes, closing his own and letting the whole thing be on a physical aspect only in which he’ll initiate and then turn passive.

Life will go on and the soft touches are what he’ll get, the saliva – bodily fluids, he vaguely remembers those – and nuzzling, the dancing about his marked and scarred skin and the hints of reciprocation in his own hands, the heaving chest, the heartbeat, the pulse he feels so clearly at the wrist and then further on up, until he opens his eyes again to see where he’s going and awaits his body to respond where his mind refuses to.

And when he steps on that bus he just hopes it won’t make him lose this connection. There’s nothing defining about a different set of walls. Walls are walls and they’ll always be the same, but this has really given him something.


End file.
